


Time After Time

by iamtheenemy (Steph)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Blow Jobs, But Aziraphale isn't much better, Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), First Time, Groundhog Day, M/M, Sushi, Time Loop, seriously how many more hints do you need crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 04:54:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21093725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steph/pseuds/iamtheenemy
Summary: “Ha!” Crowley said, pointing one of those long index fingers in Aziraphale’s face. “Thatwasn’tyesterday! That was Monday!”It's the day after Crowley and Aziraphale thwarted their respective home offices and saved the world - and it keeps being that day again and again and again.





	Time After Time

**Author's Note:**

> Song lyric is from "Get Down, Make Love" by, who else? Queen
> 
> for Kimmi x

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 2**

After Crowley dropped him back off at the bookshop following their celebratory meal at the Ritz, Aziraphale puttered around the bookstore for the rest of the evening and well into the next day, cataloguing all of the tiny differences in his bookshop since it was brought back by Adam. He had no written inventory, but Aziraphale knew every single book on the shelves.

He was pleased to note that everyone of them was back where it belonged, but they were joined by some first editions that clearly came from the mind of a pre-pubescent Antichrist. Other bits and bobs had shown up around the shop as well: a popcorn maker in the backroom, a football rolling around under one of the tables, and a set of wooden play swords propped next to the door.

All of that was understandable enough. The only truly odd addition was a large, antique grandfather clock tucked in the corner that chimed loudly every hour on the hour. It didn’t seem like something that would be to an eleven year old boy’s taste -- especially not _that_ particular eleven year old boy. However, it may be that the boy assumed it would fit in with the rest of the shop. Aziraphale found that he quite liked it after he got used to the sound of the chimes.

Feeling generous and full of angelic love for all of these silly humans who had come so close to extinction, Aziraphale decided to open the shop early that day. Well, early a relative concept, herein defined as somewhere slightly after the regal old clock struck for noon.

He unlocked the door, and didn’t try to stop himself from doing a small, general blessing of the neighbourhood to ensure that the buses arrived on time and the bakery down the road had enough biscuits for everyone.

He took a deep breath of the warm, fragrant summer and was letting it out when a bright red, flashy car sped down the street with the windows down and the radio blaring.

_Make love -_  
_Inside your bed - everybody get down make love_  
_ Get down make love_

Well. That was about enough of that. Aziraphale went back inside the shop and continued his inventory. He’d only been at it a few more minutes when the door opened and a woman walked in.

“Oh. Good afternoon,” Aziraphale said around a grimace. He was already regretting opening early.

The woman smiled politely at him and then made her way into the stacks of his religious texts.

Aziraphale went back to work, but kept a sharp eye on the woman as she browsed the shelves. He didn’t mind browsers, so long as they minded the way they handled the books. Occasionally they even made entertaining conversationalists. It was the _shoppers_ that Aziraphale couldn’t abide by.

To keep them away, he’d refused to embrace credit cards. _Oh, so sorry, no, he didn’t know offhand of where the nearest cash machine was located._

For a while that deterred people, because most of the books cost more than the down payment on a new car -- or so he’d been informed by one irate would-be customer. Some of them still persisted, however, which had led Aziraphale to briefly, in the early 2000s, only accept money orders and Mexican pesos as payment.

He’d sold one book in the following decade: a first edition copy of Federico García Lorca’s _Libros de poemas_ to a bloody Mexican tourist who looked like he’d hit the jackpot when he saw Aziraphale’s sign.

Aziraphale had moved onto his collection of romantic texts, keeping a wary eye on the browser who was running a finger along the spine of one of the books, when Crowley bounded into the shop.

“Hello, Crowley,” Aziraphale said cheerfully. “How are you feeling this morning?” The rest of the statement: _after we averted the apocalypse and cleverly evaded punishment yesterday_ went unsaid but implied, on account of the third party in the room.

Crowley looked around the shop anxiously. “Is it happening with you too?” he asked.

Aziraphale frowned. “Is what happening with me?” he asked.

Crowley groaned and gestured, his whole body twitching with nervous energy. Aziraphale felt his own body go on high alert, an entirely involuntary response to Crowley’s distress.

“Things!” Crowley said. He pointed his two index fingers at one another and then spun them around to show a circle. “Do you notice that things are different...no, not different -- the same!”

“Well,” Aziraphale began slowly, “yes. Almost everything is the same now. The shop is in tiptop condition, for example, and I know your car was returned because you kindly drove me home from the restaurant yesterday.”

“Ha!” Crowley said, pointing one of those long index fingers in Aziraphale’s face. “That _wasn’t_ yesterday! That was Monday!”

Aziraphale paused, deeply confused by this conversation and Crowley’s demeanor.  
“Yesterday _was_ Monday,” he said.

“No,” Crowley argued and then rolled his eyes, “well, technically yes, yesterday was Monday. But more accurately, yesterday was _today_. Or maybe today is yesterday?”

“Crowley, are you feeling alright?” Aziraphale asked. Perhaps the hellfire or the body swap had affected him after all.

Crowley didn’t answer his question. Instead, he moved his accusatory finger from Aziraphale to the woman looking through the books.

“Her!” Crowley said. “She was here yesterday too!”

Aziraphale gave the woman a small wave in apology and placed a hand on Crowley shoulder. “The shop wasn’t opened yesterday,” he said. “I was...a bit busy with other things?” Aziraphale turned back to the woman and gave her his kindest, most angelic grin. “So sorry,” he said. “It’s time for my lunch break. If you’d like, you could come back in an hour or two.”

With a raise of her eyebrows, the woman returned to the shelf the book she’d been paging through and left them alone.

Aziraphale guided Crowley to the sofa and conjured up a bottle of wine and two glasses. He poured one for Crowley and one for himself. Crowley took a deep chug of the dark red wine, downing the whole glass in one go. Aziraphale refilled it.

“Now, what in heaven’s name are you on about, Crowley?” he asked.

“Last night...er...this morning…” Crowley sighed and shook his head in agitation. “Let’s say last night. Last night, I had just finished watering and lecturing the plants and was sitting down to watch television when, between one blink and the next, it was daytime again.” He tapped the face of the watch on his wrist. “It was noon, when it had just been midnight.”

“You must have fallen asleep and not realized it,” Aziraphale reasoned.

“_I didn’t_,” Crowley said. “But that’s not all. I went outside to see what was going on, and it was like...yesterday all over again, down to that same woman in the shop. Even the newspapers say it’s Tuesday, but it should be _Wednesday_. I came here because I assumed whatever was happening, you noticed it too.”

“I…” Aziraphale floundered for something to say. “No, I...I haven’t.” Crowley groaned and dropped his head into his hands.

This was quite unusual. Crowley tended to be a bit over dramatic at times, but he never dipped into flights of fancy this way. On the other hand, it _had_ been an extremely trying few weeks.

“If you’ve already been through today, what happens in it?” he asked.

Crowley polished off his second glass of wine and took the bottle out Aziraphale’s hands, opting to take a sip straight from it.

“I came here. That woman was in the shop. You told her it was lunch time, and then we walked to that sushi place you like. You got the special, I had some saké. We talked for a bit, then came back here and drank. I drove home, took care of the plants, and planned to watch a true crime show I’d recorded. Then I blinked, and here we are again.”

“That sounds like an unnoteworthy day,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley threw his hands up, sloshing wine down his right wrist. “That’s what I’m saying! It was totally normal -- except that it was the day after… you know…”

That stopped Aziraphale in his tracks. “Do you think it has something to do with that?” he asked, feeling his stomach plummet.

“Of course it bloody does!” Crowley shouted. “What, we stopped the pre-destined extinction of the human race, and the next day the world gets stuck in a time loop, and I’m supposed to think that’s a coincidence?”

“Ok, alright,” Aziraphale said, taking his own sip from his glass. “Time repeating itself. That’s like something out of a science fiction novel.” Crowley huffed out an impatient breath, and Aziraphale said, “I’m sorry it’s taking me so long to catch up, but nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“That you know of,” Crowley corrected. “You didn’t even realize it was happening _now_.”

“Yes, fine,” he answered with a roll of his eyes. “That I know of. But I believe you.”

That caused Crowley to stop his anxious fidgeting. “You do?” he asked.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said with a decisive nod of his head. “You’re right, after all. The world did nearly end. It’s not as though we haven’t seen stranger things in just the past week.” Though if this wasn’t the top of the list, surely it came in a close second. “So what do we do?” he asked.

“How should I know?” Crowley asked. “That’s why I came here.”

“Well, let’s think it through,” Aziraphale said. “You claim nothing out of the ordinary happened on..we’ll call it day one.”

“Right. It was a regular, old Tuesday,” Crowley confirmed.

“To us,” Aziraphale said.

“Eh?” Crowley asked.

“Think about it,” Aziraphale added. “You said you went from your flat, here, down to the restaurant, back here, then back to your flat. Nothing strange happened here, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen somewhere else.”

“We would know,” Crowley argued.

“Would we?” Aziraphale asked, suddenly feeling very sure of himself. “We’re not exactly at the top of Heaven and Hell’s call lists, are we?”

“That’s true,” Crowley mused. With a wave of his hand, a shiny, silver computing device appeared on his lap.

“What’s that for?” Aziraphale asked.

“If we’re talking anywhere in the world, then we need a way to keep track of the news. If something strange occurs, it will show up on the internet.”

*

Hours later, Crowley was still looking through the various relevant internet pages while Aziraphale drank cocoa and anxiously turned his eyes to the door, half-expecting Satan to stroll in.

“The American President threatened to bomb France,” Crowley said.

“Is that strange?” Aziraphale asked, not one to keep up with what was happening in the colonies.

“Not really,” Crowley admitted with a sigh. He slammed the device shut, something he’d already done three of four times that day, before opening it again and resuming his search. “I have no idea what I’m looking for, but nothing Biblically significant went on anywhere so far as I can tell.”

“At least if the day repeats again, I’ll remember this time,” Aziraphale said.

“Why would you remember it this time if you didn’t last time?” Crowley asked.

That made Aziraphale pause. “Well...because now I know about it.”

“I don’t think that’s how time loops work,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale took a dainty sip from his cup of cocoa. “Time loops don’t work at all. They’re not supposed to exist. Ergo, what makes you believe that they’ll adhere to some strict set of rules?”

“Fine, you’ll remember,” Crowley said, once again cracking open his device.

“Didn’t you say that time restarted around midnight on day one?” Aziraphale asked.

“Yes, why?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale nodded at his new grandfather clock. “Because we’ve only got a couple of seconds.”

Crowley’s eyes widened. “Shit!” he said.

The clocked chimed.

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 10**

After Crowley dropped him back off at the bookshop following their celebratory meal at the Ritz, Aziraphale puttered around the bookstore for the rest of the evening and well into the next day, cataloguing all of the tiny differences in his bookshop since it was brought back by Adam. He had no written inventory, but Aziraphale knew every single book on the shelves.

Feeling generous and full of angelic love for all of these silly humans who had come so close to extinction, Aziraphale decided to open the shop early that day. Well, early a relative concept, herein defined as somewhere slightly after the regal old clock struck for noon.

He unlocked the door, and didn’t try to stop himself from doing a small, general blessing of the neighbourhood to ensure that the buses arrived on time and the bakery down the road had enough biscuits for everyone.

He took a deep breath of the warm, fragrant summer and was letting it out when a bright red, flashy car sped down the street with the windows down and the radio blaring.

_Make love -_  
_Inside your bed - everybody get down make love_  
_ Get down make love_

Well. That was about enough of that. Aziraphale went back inside the shop and continued his inventory. He’d only been at it a few more minutes when the door opened and a woman walked in.

“Oh. Good afternoon,” Aziraphale said around a grimace. He was already regretting opening early.

The woman smiled politely at him and then made her way into the stacks of his religious texts.

Aziraphale had moved onto his collection of romantic texts, keeping one eye weary on the browser, who was running a finger along the spine of one of the books, when Crowley bounded into the shop.

“Hello, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, and was just about to ask after his day when Crowley interrupted him.

“You,” he said, pointing at the woman. “Leave. We’re going to lunch.”

“Ah…” Aziraphale said, taking in Crowley’s stormy look. “Terribly sorry,” he told the woman. “Perhaps you can come back in an hour or two.”

Once the door closed, Crowley locked it with a snap of his fingers, and grabbed Aziraphale’s arm, bringing him to the sofa.

“Crowley, what -- “

“Sit,” Crowley said and thrust a glass of wine in his face. “Drink. Listen.”

Aziraphale obligingly took a sip of the wine and stared up at Crowley, who was scowling at him. “Have I done something wrong?” he asked.

“The world is stuck in a time loop,” Crowley began, making Aziraphale nearly drop his glass.

“A _what_?” he asked incredulously.

“I said listen,” Crowley repeated. “We’re stuck in a time loop that only I can remember. This is the tenth time I’ve lived this Tuesday. At midnight, instead of becoming Wednesday, everything goes back to Tuesday at noon. Yes, I’m telling the truth. No, I’m not crazy. Yes, I think it’s related to the apocalypse, but nothing strange or out of place ever occurs. Anathema doesn’t know what’s going on. Hell has no idea. It seems like I’m the only one who remembers.”

Aziraphale stared at him, and Crowley glared defiantly back. Crowley may be over dramatic, but not like this. Had what they’d been through done something to him?

“Time repeating itself?” Aziraphale began delicately. “That’s like something out of a science fiction novel.” It took him a second to realize that Crowley had just said his last sentence out loud along with him. “How did you…”

“Because you’ve said the same thing to me ten times already!” Crowley answered. “We have less than twelve hours to work on this before you forget again, so we’ve got to move as fast as we can. At the end of day four, you told me to tell you, ‘the books during the air raid.’”

Aziraphale froze, feeling his heart jump into his throat. “Why would…” he began shakily, “That is, why would I ever…”

“_I_ don’t know,” Crowley replied. “I thought maybe one of the books had something in them might help, but you keep telling me no.”

“Ahh,” Aziraphale said, quite sure that Mother Shipton would have no insights on what to do when one finds oneself repeating time. “I don’t believe they’d be of any help, no.”

“Well, it means something to you, because it’s made you believe me every time,” Crowley said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“I see,” Aziraphale said, wanting to give his past-self a swift kick. He couldn’t fault his own logic, however. Having Crowley remind Aziraphale of his most treasured memory, a moment that Crowley could not possibly know Aziraphale cherished as much as he did, was certainly one way to get his own attention.

He took another drink of his wine. “Sit,” he said.

Crowley sat down beside him on the sofa. “When this is over, you’re going to tell me what that means.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, lying through his teeth. Crowley narrowed his eyes, and Aziraphale spoke over any objections. “You say Anathema can’t help, hm? What about Adam?”

Crowley looked as though he was going to argue, but then he fell back against the sofa instead. “Can’t find him.”

Aziraphale sat up in alarm. “You mean he’s lost again?”

“I mean I can’t find him. I think he’s put some sort of protection around himself and his family and those three little friends of his. We tried on days five and seven,” Crowley answered.

Aziraphale thought about this. “Can’t say I blame him,” he said.

“Inconvenient though,” Crowley said.

“Indeed,” Aziraphale agreed. “He’s only eleven, remember. For all we know, he could be playing some sort of hide and seek game with his friends without realizing the consequences.”

“Doesn’t explain why I’m the only one who knows it’s happening,” Crowley said.

“Because you’re a demon?” Aziraphale asked, and then stopped, remembering what Crowley said earlier. “Hell doesn’t know?”

Crowley shook his head. “Not the slightest clue.”

“What about Heaven?” Aziraphale asked and felt Crowley stiffen beside him.

“I have no idea,” he responded.

“Haven’t I had a look around in all these other days you say we’ve had?” Aziraphale asked.

“And how would you like to do that?” Crowley replied, and his tone told Aziraphale that this was an argument they’d already had. “Walk up to Gabriel and ask for information? You didn’t see the look on his face when he thought he was going to watch you die.”

Aziraphale grimaced. “Believe me, I’m unfortunately very familiar with Gabriel’s face.”

“Not this one,” Crowley said with real venom in his voice. “Six thousand years, and I’ve never seen him look so...gleeful.”

“It wasn’t exactly a solemn affair when they planned the same for you in Hell,” Aziraphale countered.

Crowley waved that point away. “It’s Hell! There are no loyalties there. I skulked around, bribed the right people, got the information and got out. Beezlebub never even knew.”

“But this could be serious. We need to know what we’re dealing with.” Aziraphale thought about it. Crowley was right. Not a single denizen of Heaven would be willing to help him. They all saw him as a traitor, and it was quite clear that he wouldn’t be welcomed back through the pearly gates any time soon. “There must be _some_ way to -- the archive!” he gasped, inspiration dawning. “I don’t have to speak to anyone at all, I can just check the archive. Heaven keeps extensive records on every day in human history, you see. I’ll pop in, check the archive for today and see if it has anything out of the ordinary.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Crowley answered, but Aziraphale had convinced himself.

“In and out, quick as a jif,” he promised.

*

The Great Archive was located in the easternmost spire of the Heavenly city. It was sparsely populated, since only Heaven’s few archivists had any particular use for it, and even then, their help was only called upon every few centuries or so. It was a cushy job if you could land it.

The entrance to the Great Archive was a sliding door that eased open as soon as Aziraphale neared it. As Aziraphale expected, the cold, glass room was empty. In the center was the archive itself, chugging away as it recorded the day’s events on Earth. The interface wasn’t so much a computer as it was a neural transmitter that connected to the mind of any angel who needed access and allowed them to navigate telepathically.

This was excellent news, since Aziraphale was rubbish with computers.

He asked to see all the archive notes for that day. Obligingly, the archive spit out the information in holographs in front of him. Nothing peculiar at all. A bit of espionage, plenty of murder, a hurricane gaining speed in the Atlantic. But no mention of anything anomalous occurring, and no hiccoughs on the feed. If Heaven knew about what Crowley was experiencing, they weren’t keeping track of it.

He closed the archive and returned it to the default setting, preparing to leave.

“Are you freaking kidding me?”

Aziraphale jumped out of his skin - nearly literally - and spun around to come face to face with Gabriel staring at him incredulously with those wide, purple eyes.

“Er, Gabriel…”

“Was trying to kill you yesterday seriously not enough of a hint that you’re not wanted here?” he asked.

“No -- that is, hint very much received. But, you see, something odd is happening on Earth and -- “ Aziraphale began.

“Odd? Yeah, I’d say so,” Gabriel interrupted. “It’s still turning, for one thing. Do you have any idea how excited I was to finally be done babysitting those humans? To not have to deal with anymore of their crying when they get up here all, ‘boo-hoo, I miss my family’? You’re in _Heaven_, what more could you possibly want?”

“I see,” Aziraphale said, slowly backing away.

“No, you don’t see!” Gabriel said. “Now the Great War has been postponed until God knows when, and it’s all because of _you_.”

Gabriel stood between Aziraphale and the exit, so Aziraphale began to carefully edge around the angry arch-angel and fell back on what he always clung to in times of stress: politeness.

“So terribly sorry for the inconvenience,” he said, with one eye on Gabriel and the other on the door. “It’s clear that my presence is bothersome to you, so I’ll just be on my way and this will be the last you hear from me.”

Aziraphale gave up on subtly and rushed the last few yards to the exit.

“Not quite yet,” Gabriel said, and Aziraphale slid to a stop as Sandalphon appeared beside him, smirking ominously. “I’ve been working on a theory of my own. And since you’re here, I might as well test it.”

“What’s th -- _ah_!” Aziraphale cried and stared down at his stomach where Sandalphon had plunged a dagger in all the way to its shiny, silver hilt.

Sandalphon pulled it out again with a sickening squelching sound and stepped back.

“Traitor,” he hissed.

Aziraphale barely heard him, focused as he was on the fire coursing through his body, starting at his wound and working its way outward.

“How…?” he gasped as he stumbled back. His white shirt and favourite coat were already getting soaked through with thick, sticky blood. And try as he might, none of Aziraphale’s magic could stop the hemorrhaging or the agonizing pain.

“Ha!” Gabriel said triumphantly.

_Oh, there’s the face Crowley meant_, Aziraphale thought weakly.

“Forged in hellfire. I knew it. I _knew_ you used some kind of demonic curse yesterday,” Gabriel crowed. “What did you do? Let your boyfriend sully your celestial form so you could survive your punishment like the cockroach that you are?”

Aziraphale didn’t waste the energy it would take to laugh at Gabriel’s eternal lack of creativity. Instead, before Sandalphon could strike with the dagger a second time, Aziraphale used the last of his strength to lurch himself through the doorway and focus on getting back to the bookshop.

He landed in a heap on the lacquered wooden floor of the shop, wrenching a startled and painful shout from him.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley, who was waiting for him, shouted in alarm. He raced over to where Aziraphale had collapsed and dropped to his knees at his side, his black sunglasses falling off in his haste. “Aziraphale!” he cried again, his golden eyes as wide as saucers. “What have they done to you?”

Crowley put a light hand down on the wound in Aziraphale’s stomach. Even that light pressure was enough to cause Aziraphale to cry out and try to move away. His arms and legs were beginning to numb, which was a relief because it meant less pain.

“Hellfire,” Crowley hissed after a moment. “Those bastards.”

“You…” Aziraphale croaked, “right…”

“Of course I was right. I’m always right, and you never bloody listen!” Crowley yelled. Then he stripped off his black coat, hands stained with Aziraphale’s blood, and used the material to staunch the bleeding, pressing down hard enough on the wound that it felt like another stab of that dagger.

He tried to writhe away, but Crowley held him steady.

“Don’t move! Don’t move, you idiot!”

Aziraphale remembered that he had something important to tell Crowley then. Important enough to penetrate his mind despite the hellfire coursing through his veins and setting his whole body aflame from the inside out.

He took a deep breath and told Crowley, “Heaven...doesn’t...know.”

Crowley shook his head, knocking a few perfectly coiffed strands of auburn hair out of place. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, which was patently untrue, but Aziraphale had no strength left to tell him so. “It doesn’t matter, because everything is going to reboot again.”

He pressed down harder, but Aziraphale could no longer feel it amidst the maelstrom of pain building to a rapid crescendo inside of him.

“It’s going to start again,” Crowley said. “It is. You’re going to be fine, because everything will reboot. It will. Please, please…” He made a wet sort of gasping sound that Aziraphale had never heard from him before. He was covered up to his elbows in Aziraphale’s blood, but Crowley seemed unconcerned by that as he continued to speak urgently, wildly, headed tilted upwards as if speaking to the Almighty Herself. “Give me one more time. Please. I don’t know why this is happening, but please, just one more time. You have to…”

Aziraphale managed to somehow lift his numb, leaden arm off the floor to touch Crowley’s face. Whole words were too much for him, so he settled for a quiet, “shhh…”

Crowley pressed his cheek into Aziraphale’s palm and then turned and kissed the center of it. “Don’t worry. You’re coming back. A few more hours, and you’ll be back.”

Aziraphale tried to nod, but then the fire consumed his heart, his throat, his tongue, and he knew that was it.

“Aziraph -- !”

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 11**

_Make love -_  
_Inside your bed - everybody get down make love_  
_ Get down make love_

Well. That was about enough of that. Aziraphale went back inside the shop and continued his inventory. He’d only been at it a few more minutes when the door opened and a woman walked in.

“Oh. Good afternoon,” Aziraphale said around a grimace. He was already regretting opening early.

The woman smiled politely at him and then made her way into the stacks of his religious texts.

He moved onto cataloguing the romantic texts with a wary eye on the woman, ready to jump in if it looked like she was at risk of choosing a book. Hidden as he was behind a large bookshelf, he quickly conjured up a steaming cup of tea and took a pleasant sip as his eyes skimmed through each tome with a critical eye.

They all looked the same as they had before the fire, down to the rip on the corner of the original rough draft of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Samuel had gifted it to him after a particularly memorable night in Malta, 1804.

Aziraphale carefully took the yellowed pages off the shelf and brought them to a table. It had been close to a century since he’d last reread it, and he preferred the earlier version to what Samuel eventually published.

It really was quite a lovely day, and the sun streaming in the windows provided more than enough light for Aziraphale to parse the awful penmanship.

He’d made it about halfway through when he looked up to once again admire the weather. Out of the corner of his eye, just barely in view near the side of the building was a familiar shock of red hair.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale sadi to himself. He grinned and abandoned his reading for the moment. The previous day, when they’d toasted the world and spent the rest of the evening talking had been one of Aziraphale’s best of recent memory. He’d been hoping that Crowley would come by to visit today as well.

Aziraphale headed out the front door.

“Crowley?” he called.

The hair disappeared from view. With a confused frown, Aziraphale hastened his pace and turned the corner. It was, in fact, his friend nearly jogging down the road. That was extremely odd. Crowley, in six thousand years, was never one to move quickly. He much preferred a more sedate and swaggering walk. He was forever sauntering through life as if he had never heard the word ‘deadline’.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale said again, and this time his friend finally stopped. There was a pause and then Crowley spun around to face him.

“Aziraphale!” he said with a false brightness recognizable from a mile away. “What a coincidence seeing you here!”

“Outside of my shop?” Aziraphale asked, feeling his eyebrows raise.

“Yeah, well. Can’t talk. Lots of important things to get to. Meetings and things.” Crowley waved a careless hand in the air. “Business.”

“Oh? What sort of business?”

“The important sort, like I said,” Crowley replied. He took a deep breath and some of the frantic energy appeared to seep out of him, like air let out of a balloon, and he stepped toward Aziraphale. “You alright then?”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Aziraphale answered. “Gabriel hasn’t found a way to try and exact anymore hideous revenge, so it looks like our little scheme did the trick.”

Crowley made a pained sort of sound, quickly stifled, and Aziraphale frowned.

“Are _you_ alright, though, Crowley? You’re acting very strange,” Aziraphale commented. It was a marked difference from how happy and buoyant he’d been the night before. Crowley had seemed content with the world, ordering a third bottle of champagne and a second round of desserts at dinner to keep the night going.

“I’m fine, I said. Just busy,” Crowley answered with a scowl. “Why don’t you ever listen to me?”

“I’m sorry?” Aziraphale asked, confused.

“You should be!” Crowley responded. Instead of turning on his heel and leaving, as Aziraphale had half-expected him to do after that outburst, he took a step closer to Aziraphale and put a hand on his shoulder, his grip tight through the several layers of Aziraphale’s clothes.

“You don’t look fine,” Aziraphale said and Crowley snorted.

“Top marks for observation.” He sighed. “It’s nothing. Nothing bad. Nothing about…” He drew a circle in the air that was clearly meant to stand in for ‘the catastrophic, world-ending, Biblical event we just averted.’ “So don’t worry. I’ll swing by tomorrow and tell you about it.”

Aziraphale was dreadfully curious, but he had no right to nose his way into Crowley’s personal business. So he nodded.

“We could get sushi,” Aziraphale suggested.

“Sushi it is,” Crowley agreed, hardly a concession considering he rarely ever ate when the two of them went out. “Later.”

“Good bye,” Aziraphale said, watching him leave.

When he went back in the bookshop, the woman had moved onto biographies.

“Sorry to pop out like that,” Aziraphale said, secretly annoyed that she had stuck around. “I went to talk to a dear friend of mine, that was all.”

The woman responded with a vague smile and kept browsing, clearly uninterested. Aziraphale headed back to his table where Coleridge’s wisdom awaited him.

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 23**

_Make love -_  
_Inside your bed - everybody get down make love_  
_ Get down make love_

Well. That was about enough of that. Aziraphale went back inside the shop and continued his inventory. He’d only been at it a few more minutes when the door opened and a woman walked in.

“Oh. Good afternoon,” Aziraphale said around a grimace. He was already regretting opening early.

The woman smiled politely at him and then made her way into the stacks of his religious texts.

Aziraphale had moved onto his collection of romantic texts, keeping a wary eye on the browser who was running a finger along the spine of one of the books, when Crowley bounded into the shop holding several bags and kicking the door shut with one booted foot.

“Hello, Crowley,” said Aziraphale, perking up immediately. “What have you got there?”

“Sushi from that place you like down the road,” Crowley answered. He turned and looked at the woman wandering around. “It’s time for his lunch break.”

“So sorry,” Aziraphale told the woman, knowing he didn’t look it at all. Sushi sounded delightful. When she left, Crowley placed the bags on a table and locked the door.

“Got you the special,” Crowley said, pulling out a takeaway container. “Plus rice, miso soup, anmitsu and daifuku for dessert, and a bottle of saké to share. Wait, no. Two bottles.”

“What’s all this for?” Aziraphale asked, eyes lighting up at the feast that Crowley laid out before him.

Crowley sat down in the chair across from his in that boneless slouch he’d perfected over six thousand years. He nimbly opened the first bottle of saké and conjured up two choko. He filled them each, passing one to Aziraphale and keeping the other for himself.

Crowley took a sip and shrugged. “We saved the world, didn’t we?” he asked.

“Indeed we did,” Aziraphale agreed, and then conceded, “With a little help.”

“I think that entitles us to enjoy ourselves a bit,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale tucked into his sashimi and replied, “I quite enjoyed our evening yesterday.”

Crowley cocked his head, recalling. “Yeah, that was a good day.”

Aziraphale lifted his cup of saké in the air. “To more good days.”

Crowley clinked his own cup with Aziraphale’s.

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 35**

_Make love -_  
_ Inside your bed - everybody get down make love_  
_ Get down make love_

Well. That was about enough of that. Aziraphale went back inside the shop and continued his inventory. He’d only been at it a few more minutes when the door opened and a woman walked in.

“Oh. Good afternoon,” Aziraphale said around a grimace. He was already regretting opening early.

The woman smiled politely at him and then made her way into the stacks of his religious texts.

Aziraphale had moved onto his collection of romantic texts, keeping a wary eye on the browser who was running a finger along the spine of one of the books, when the door opened. He sighed, not at all excited about entertaining another customer. When he looked up, though, Aziraphale froze in surprise.

“Crowley,” he said, taking in his friend. “Well.”

Since they’d said seen each other the night before, Crowley had apparently made some decisions. His old friend stood before him a woman, bright red hair flowing in loose waves across her shoulders, held out of her eyes by a pin in the shape of a coiling serpent with two tiny rubies for eyes. The usual all-black coat and slacks were traded in for a tight black dress made of a material that glittered like scales when it caught the light. She walked in on heels so high that they defied all known laws of physics.

“What’s all this about?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley shrugged as she came towards him, bright red lips slightly parted. “First day of the new world. Thought it might be time for a change.”

“I see,” Aziraphale said. He tried to modulate his voice when he said, “You plan to stay this way for a while then?”

Crowley paused in the act of sitting down and then dropped into the chair and crossed one leg over the other.

“You don’t like it,” she said, sounding tired.

“I didn’t mean that!” Aziraphale argued. He had a place in his heart for Nanny Ashtoreth and the other female forms that Crowley had inhabited, but over the centuries Aziraphale had become extremely, some might say _inappropriately_ fond of Crowley’s male form. “You look lovely,” he added, when Crowley scowled at him.

“But you said…” Crowley began, and then snapped her mouth shut.

“I said what?” Aziraphale asked.

“Nevermind,” Crowley replied.

“Well, it hardly matters what I think about your chosen form anyway,” Aziraphale reasoned. In fact, since Aziraphale was only attracted to men -- and one man in particular -- it might be easier on them both if Crowley wore this body for a few decades. “All that matters is that you like it. You’ll certainly turn heads.”

With a sigh, Crowley snapped his fingers and slid back into his male form. Immediately, Aziraphale felt something inside his chest loosen, but he tried to keep that off his face. It was then that he remembered the woman who was still loitering in the store. With a snap of his own fingers, he wiped her memory.

“So sorry, dear,” Aziraphale told her. “Would you mind coming back in an hour or two? It’s time for lunch.”

The woman slid the book she’d been studying back onto the shelf and left without a fuss. Once the door closed behind her, Aziraphale told Crowley, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Crowley answered.

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 46**

The day after he and Crowley managed to trick their respective home offices and avert the foretold apocalypse, Aziraphale was in the process of cataloguing his romantic texts, checking Adam’s work for any discrepancies, when Crowley walked into the shop.

“Oh, hello, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, perking up immediately.

“Why did you put that giant clock in here anyway?” Crowley asked as he marched past Aziraphale and to the back of the shop where the grandfather clock now stood. “Shop’s closed for lunch,” he stated quite rudely to a female customer who had been browsing Aziraphale’s books on religion.

“So sorry,” Aziraphale apologized to her as he scurried to keep up with Crowley. “I didn’t put it there,” he responded. “It was one of Adam’s more esoteric gifts. I like it, it’ll just take some getting used to, that’s all.”

Crowley frowned. “It wasn’t here when we switched bodies. I walked through the whole shop that morning.”

“Really? That’s odd. Perhaps it wasn’t quite finished when you were here. Crowley?” He watched as Crowley inspected it from all sides, even dragging a chair so that he could look on the top of it. “Do you think there’s something sinister about it?”

“Dunno,” Crowley responded as he pried open the glass around the clock face. “Seems weird though. Why a clock, of all things?”

“I won’t confess myself an expert on the thought process of our eleven-year-old Antichrist,” Aziraphale said.

“Hm…” Crowley said. Then he snapped his fingers. The clock remained. “Can you move it?”

Aziraphale snapped his own fingers, but still nothing happened. He tried again, this time to send it across the room. The clock remained stubbornly in place. “It won’t budge.”

“What about the old fashioned way?” Crowley suggested, and then rammed a shoulder into the side of it and pushed. After a few fruitless seconds, he stopped, breathing heavily. The clock stood fast.

“I guess he wants me to keep it,” Aziraphale said, feeling uncertain.

Crowley snapped and conjured a flame in the palm of his hand. As soon as he touched it to the wood, the fire snuffed itself out. Another snap, and this time a hammer was in his hand. He swung it and the tool promptly broke in half.

“Well,” Aziraphale said. “That seems a bit excessive.”

Crowley pressed a hand against it. “I don’t see any sigils or markings. It doesn’t _feel_ occult.”

“Why are you so concerned about the clock?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley slanted him a look but otherwise didn’t respond. “This has to mean something,” he said.

“Mean something about what?” Aziraphale asked.

“I don’t have time for this,” Crowley responded. He spun on his heel and headed towards the door.

“Wha -- “ Aziraphale said, completely flummoxed. “Crowley, what’s going on? What aren’t you telling me?”

“I’ve told you everything,” Crowley said as he stepped out onto the street. “Call you tomorrow.”

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 58**

_Make love -_  
_Inside your bed - everybody get down make love_  
_ Get down make love_

Well. That was about enough of that. Aziraphale went back inside the shop and continued his inventory. He’d only been at it a few more minutes when the door opened and a woman walked in.

“Oh. Good afternoon,” Aziraphale said around a grimace. He was already regretting opening early.

The woman smiled politely at him and then made her way into the stacks of his religious texts.

Aziraphale had moved onto his collection of romantic texts, keeping a wary eye on the browser as the door of his shop flew open. Aziraphale jumped, nearly dropping the book in his hands, but it was only Crowley striding in with a strange, manic look in his eye.

“Hello, Crowley,” Aziraphale greeted, perking up immediately.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley responded and then lashed his arm out and pointed to the customer. “And you! All this time, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard you speak,” he said nonsensically. “But on the other hand, I don’t care. So carry on. Or don’t, in this case.”

“Are you drunk?” Aziraphale asked. “It’s not even one o’clock!”

“Five o’clock somewhere!” Crowley replied. “Are you still here?” he asked the woman. “Don’t miss your cue. Go on, fuck off.”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale yelled, shocked. To the customer he added, “I am so terribly sorry. If you could maybe come back in an hour or two?”

When she left and the door closed, Aziraphale said, “What’s gotten into you?”

“Let’s get lunch,” Crowley answered as he made an agitated circle around the room.  
“But not sushi. I’m so bloody sick of sushi.”

Now that he mentioned it, sushi sounded wonderful to Aziraphale.

“What did you want instead?” he asked.

“Crepes,” Crowley said firmly. “Let’s go to Paris. Should be better now than the last time we stopped by.”

Aziraphale stared at him. “You want to go to Paris? Now?”

“Do you have anything better to do?” he asked.

“Well, no, not especially,” Aziraphale admitted. “I was in the middle of cataloguing my books.”

“The books aren’t going anywhere,” Crowley answered. He reached out and touched Aziraphale’s shoulder, and between one breath and the next, they were standing on a crowded Parisian street. “There,” Crowley said, looking satisfied. “Where to?”

“You’re acting very oddly,” Aziraphale told him. “Did something happen last night?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Crowley said, and then pointed. “This way looks good.”

He set off, and Aziraphale rushed to catch up with his longer strides, concern bubbling up at his friend’s erratic behaviour.

“What’s gotten into you?”

“See that man over there?” Crowley asked, indicating a gentleman in a dark blue suit, carrying a briefcase in one hand. “He’s been cheating on his wife for the last four years.” Crowley cocked his thumb and first finger like a gun and pretended to shoot. The man tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and landed inside a fountain.

“She’s got a migraine.” Another shot of his fingers and a woman wearing large sunglasses stopped walking and pressed a hand to her head as the tension in her shoulders eased.

“That boy wants ice cream.” A cone appeared in the astonished boy’s hand.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale said. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment, but we should try to avoid getting back on the radar of our respective home offices. Throwing around blessings and curses willy-nilly is bound to draw attention.”

“Nahhh, it’ll be fine,” Crowley said.

“It’ll be _fine_?” Aziraphale repeated incredulously.

They walked past a man running a Ponzi scheme that was actively scamming people out of millions.

Crowley cocked his finger at him, and when the man ran a hand through his thick hair, he came away with a matted handful of the dark strands.

“We’re in a whole new world, angel. There’s no consequences,” Crowley insisted. As if to prove his point, he extended his fingers upward, shooting sparks of shimmering light into the air.

“Stop it,” Aziraphale hissed. He jumped in front of Crowley and covered both of his hands while wiping the memories of everyone in the area.

“You worry too much,” Crowley said, but his hands stilled in Aziraphale’s grip. “It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. I can do anything I want. _Anything_. I could…” He paused, taking a step closer to Aziraphale and clenching his fingers around Aziraphale’s.

He was close enough that Aziraphale could see his eyes through the lenses of those ever-present sunglasses.

“You could…?” Aziraphale prompted. He felt the sudden change in the conversation like an electric current. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. “What could you do?”

Crowley stared at him for a long moment before pulling his hands away and moving away from Aziraphale.

“Nothing,” he answered, and all of that manic energy seemed to drain out of him like a balloon that had been pricked. “Nothing,” he repeated. “You’d never even know, but that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

Aziraphale frowned, thoroughly confused by another quick shift in the conversation. “I’d never know what?”

Crowley let out a frustrated sound and turned away. “Forget it.” He laughed then, a particularly dry sound, at a joke that Aziraphale didn’t understand. “Sorry, I gotta go.”

And then, with a snap of his fingers, he was gone, leaving Aziraphale standing alone on the street.

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 59**

_Make love -_  
_ Inside your bed - everybody get down make love_  
_ Get down make love_

Well. That was about enough of that. Aziraphale went back inside the shop and continued his inventory. He’d only been at it a few more minutes when the door opened and a woman walked in.

“Oh. Good afternoon,” Aziraphale said around a grimace. He was already regretting opening early.

The woman smiled politely at him and then made her way into the stacks of his religious texts.

Aziraphale had moved onto his collection of romantic texts, keeping a wary eye on the browser who was running a finger along the spine of one of the books, when Crowley walked into the shop holding several bags and kicking the door shut with one booted foot.

“Hello, Crowley,” said Aziraphale, perking up immediately. “What have you got there?”

“Sushi from that place you like down the road,” Crowley answered. He turned and looked at the woman wandering around. “He’s closing for lunch.”

“So sorry,” Aziraphale told the woman, knowing he didn’t look it at all. Sushi sounded delightful. When she left, Crowley placed the bags on a table and locked the door.

“Got you the special,” Crowley said, pulling out a takeaway container. “Plus rice, miso soup, and anmitsu for dessert. You didn’t like the daifuku.”

Aziraphale watched him take out the items one at a time. “I don’t recall ever trying the daifuku,” he said, though clearly he must have at some point and it hadn’t left an impression.

Crowley made a noncommittal noise and pulled two bottles of saké out of the second bag. With a wave of his hand, he made two deep wine glasses appear and poured them each a generous amount of the drink.

“Getting right to it, I see,” Aziraphale said, but he accepted the glass and took a sip, sighing appreciatively. “Lovely. How’s your day been?”

Crowley dropped into the chair across from him and extended his long legs out, crossing them at the ankles. “Same old,” he replied. “You?”

Aziraphale smiled as he dug into the sashimi. “Wonderful. I’ll never take this planet for granted again. The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and I get to enjoy another meal with you.”

The new clock in the back chimed once on the hour, and Aziraphale gave a bit of a jump in his seat. He still hadn’t gotten used to it yet.

“That bloody clock,” Crowley muttered darkly.

“You don’t like it?” Aziraphale asked. “Adam must have added it in when he remade the shop. It’s growing on me.”

“It’s fine,” Crowley said. “Eat your lunch.”

Aziraphale obliged him, savouring the truly excellent meal. He took another drink from his glass, and then admitted, “I hoped to see you again today.”

“Oh?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale nodded. “Yes. That is to say, I enjoyed our evening together last night. It’s good to know we’ll be able to see each other now without fear of being found out.”

In fact, he felt giddy about the prospect of more meals and plays with his friend. He thought of them going to St. James’ Park and feeding the ducks, not as a cover, but just because they wanted to. Unbidden, his mind conjured up the image of him taking Crowley’s hand as they stood at the edge of the water. He cleared that thought with a shake of his head.

“Do you have anything else on tonight?” Crowley asked.

“No,” Aziraphale answered.

Crowley picked up the bottle of saké and gave it an enticing shake. “Let’s get spectacularly drunk.”

*

“And then Beellllzerbub said they didn’t believe Michael, and Hastur picked up this teeny tiny…” Aziraphale squinted at his hands as he tried to show the correct dimensions of the short, squat little demon that Hastur had sacrificed.

Crowley made a face. “That’s Flan.”

“Flan?” Aziraphale repeated. “Like the dessert?” And then he found himself nearly listing over on the sofa in laughter.

Crowley watched him with an amused tilt of his eyebrow. “Nothing sweet about him,” he said. “Big fan of the really gruesome tortures. Probably compren -- compensating. If you know what I mean.”

Still chuckling, Aziraphale dropped his head back on the top of the sofa. His limbs were pleasantly heavy and his whole body was warm and cozy. The second bottle of saké, which had miraculously never gone empty, had done its job after a whole day spent drinking and reminiscing. The shop never did get reopened.

Crowley refilled their glasses and adjusted his drooping sunglasses before giving up and tossing them on the table.

He took a large gulp and then asked, “Didja really learn the gavotte last week...year...whatever?”

“Century?” Aziraphale suggested.

“Ish,” Crowley agreed.

Aziraphale nodded enthusiastically. “Fantastic dance. Shame it went out of style.”

Crowley gestured with arm holding his glass and saké sloshed out of the side. “Let’s see it then.”

Aziraphale’s eyes followed where he pointed to the middle of the room. “What -- now?” he asked.

“No, tomorrow,” Crowley said and then snorted.

“There’s no music,” Aziraphale protested.

With a snap of his fingers, Crowley got Aziraphale’s dusty old gramophone turning and a jaunty melody began to play. “Well? Or have you forgotten how?”

“Excuse me,” Aziraphale said, offended, as he unsteadily pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll have you know that my abilities are still just as…” He tripped on the edge of the table and would have crashed into a bookcase if not for Crowley’s hand grabbing hold of his coat. “Thank you,” Aziraphale said. “Just as strong as they ever were. Now get back. I’ll need some room.”

Crowley melted onto the sofa, long limbs spread out, bright golden eyes watching Aziraphale keenly. “Go on then.”

Aziraphale took a deep breath, heart beginning to beat rather more quickly at Crowley’s rapt attention, and then waited for a break in the music to start. As he went through the movements he’d perfected so long ago, he realized that he couldn’t do it without a partner.

*

“Your _right_ arm,” Aziraphale admonished to Crowley as he tried to guide him in the next steps.

“This _is_ my right arm,” Crowley replied.

Aziraphale stopped and stared a moment. “Oh yes, my mistake. I meant your left, of course.”

*

Some time later, having gavotted themselves out and switched from saké to wine, Aziraphale and Crowley were back on the sofa passing the bottle back and forth between themselves.

“Suppose it’s, you know, that I don’t want you to die,” Crowley slurred as he took another drink. “So shh... keep it a secret.”

“Keep what a secret?” Aziraphale asked.

“Can’t tell you. It’s a secret,” Crowley replied.

Aziraphale thought about this. “Fair enough,” he decided.

*

“You were right, you know,” Aziraphale admitted. Somehow, he was on the floor, head resting against the sofa cushion as he looked up at Crowley.

“‘m always right,” Crowley said. “About what?”

“Us being on our own side,” Aziraphale said. He was finding it harder to keep his eyes opened, but he knew it was necessary that Crowley hear this just then. “You’re…”

“What?” Crowley asked.

“You’re the only thing that matters in all of Creation,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley’s eyes widened, and Aziraphale held his breath, waiting for what he was about to say and suddenly feeling much more sober.

At that moment, the clock began to chime midnight.

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 60**

_Make love -_  
_Inside your bed - everybody get down make love_  
_ Get down make love_

Well. That was about enough of that. Aziraphale went back inside the shop and continued his inventory. He’d only been at it a few more minutes when the door opened and a woman walked in.

“Oh. Good afternoon,” Aziraphale said around a grimace. He was already regretting opening early.

The woman smiled politely at him and then made her way into the stacks of his religious texts.

Aziraphale had moved onto his collection of romantic texts, keeping a wary eye on the browser who was running a finger along the spine of one of the books, when Crowley walked into the shop holding a bouquet of flowers.

“Hello, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, eyeing the flowers curiously. “What are those for?”

“You,” Crowley answered, and nearly knocked Aziraphale back with the force which he pushed the flowers into his arms.

“Well, how kind,” Aziraphale replied awkwardly. He inspected the bouquet and tried to tamp down on the bubbly happiness that swelled inside of him at the gesture. “Honoring our success, I suppose?”

He turned until his back was facing the woman browsing the shelves and surreptitiously conjured a vase for them.

“Err...yes,” Crowley said.

“They’re lovely,” Aziraphale said, setting them down on his desk.

“Anyway,” Crowley said, and he began pacing the shop. He picked out a book from a shelf, seemingly at random and flipped through it. “I just wanted to say…” Crowley coughed and looked up at the ceiling, down at the ground, somewhere slightly over Aziraphale’s shoulder. “That is, I just wanted to say that you’re the only…”

The grandfather clock in the backroom chimed to indicate one o’clock. Crowley’s head turned as he followed the sound.

“One of the more esoteric gifts that Adam added to the shop,” Aziraphale told him. “I’m still getting used to it. What were you saying?”

“Hmm?” Crowley asked. “Oh. That you’re the only person who still cares about Proust.” He groaned and jammed the book back into its place on the shelf.

Aziraphale frowned in indignation. “I am not,” he said.

“Yeah, well... “ Crowley continued to pace in a restless, staccato rhythm around the room. “Says you.”

“Everything alright?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley rounded on Aziraphale, crowding him against a wall, eyes raking over Aziraphale’s face.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale asked, his breath catching in his throat.

A sound made them jump. Crowley jerked away from him and they both turned to see the woman who’d been earlier browsing the shelves making her way out the door.

“Terribly sorry,” Aziraphale called out to her as the door slammed shut behind her.

“Shit,” Crowley grumbled.

“What’s gotten into you?” Aziraphale asked.

“Not enough saké,” Crowley muttered.

“You’ve been drinking saké?” Aziraphale asked. That would certainly explain his strange behaviour. And the flowers.

“Yes. Very drunk. Think I’ll go home to sleep it off. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Crowley said.

“Oh, well. Probably for the best,” Aziraphale said, obscurely disappointed and a bit put out. Now that he’d put the thought in his head, sushi and saké sounded wonderful to Aziraphale. Perhaps he’d get some lunch at the Japanese restaurant down the road.

“Later,” Crowley said, waving a careless hand over his shoulder as he left.

Aziraphale looked at the beautiful bouquet of flowers on his desk. How odd.

*

Aziraphale visited the restaurant and tried the special, which was superb. He took his time on the meal, savouring each course and enjoying a pleasant conversation with the owner. He tried the daifuku for dessert, but found it not to his liking, a fact that he politely failed to mention to Hiroki.

Aziraphale went back home and locked the door behind him, not bothering to reopen the shop for the day. Instead, he made himself a cup of cocoa and finished scanning his inventory with a critical eye.

Hours later, he pulled out the rough draft of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” that Sam Coleridge had gifted to him following an unforgettable night in Malta, 1804.

It had been decades since he’d last perused through it, but he’d come across it earlier that day during his cataloguing and set it aside for a reread. The journey through the tale was as enjoyable as he remembered, and he had nearly reached the end when Crowley came barreling through the front door.

Aziraphale set aside the papers on his lap and placed them on the table beside the sofa as Crowley rounded on him.

“I need to...listen,” he said, thrusting an angry finger in Aziraphale’s face.

“Go on,” Aziraphale said coaxingly.

“I...I…”

Abruptly, Crowley stopped his agitated pacing in front of Aziraphale. He stared down at him, his mouth turned into a frustrated frown. With a growl, he ran his hands through his auburn hair before falling to his knees.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale gasped, his voice pitching up in alarm.

Crowley tipped his head forward until his cheek came to rest on Aziraphale’s knee. Aziraphale sucked in a harsh breath and tentatively reached his hand out, running a hand through Crowley’s hair. Crowley leaned back into the touch, eyes falling shut.

“What is it?” Aziraphale asked quietly, reverently. “What do you need?”

That got Crowley moving. He lurched forward, scrambling for the fasteners on Aziraphale’s white slacks with shaking hands.

“Please let me. Just once, please. I’ll only do it one time, I swear it,” he pled as fumbled with the material. Aziraphale lifted his hips without protest as Crowley dragged the slacks and his pants down and off of his legs.

“Alright,” he said carefully, trying whatever he could to soothe his agitated friend. “Alright, Crowley. One time, like you said.”

Crowley didn’t wait any longer. He wrapped a hand around Aziraphale’s cock. And though he knew that was where this was going -- obviously, with the derobing -- the feeling of Crowley’s hand on him still ripped a shocked and excited gasp from his throat.

Immediately, his cock started to fill and he couldn’t stop himself from running a shaking hand through Crowley’s hair, over his ear, and around to grip the back of his neck.

“Whatever you need,” Aziraphale repeated, and Crowley responded by bending down and taking Aziraphale’s cock into his mouth with little finesse but plenty of enthusiasm.

Crowley’s hands gripped tightly into Aziraphale’s thighs, kneading in a way that would have been ticklish under any other circumstances, but just then only added to the sensations.

“Can I…” Aziraphale said, and stopped when his voice came out in a cracked sort of groan. He swallowed and tried again. “Can I move?” he asked. The discipline it took to stay completely still was enough to make his legs tremble, but he had no idea what it was that Crowley wanted or what Crowley needed him to do.

The answer was instant. Crowley nodded, his hot, desperate gaze moving up to meet Aziraphale’s matching expression.

With as much care and gentleness as he could muster, Aziraphale used the hand in Crowley’s hair as leverage and began to rock into the soft, wet pressure of Crowley’s mouth around him.

“Oh...oh my,” Aziraphale sighed, and his eyes slipped blissfully shut for a moment before he forced them open again, not wanting to miss a moment of this. Soon, his thrusts became less careful as Crowley continued his unrelentingly pleasurable assault.

On one such uncontrolled thrust, Crowley reached around Aziraphale’s hips and pulled him in, holding him steady as he swallowed Aziraphale’s cock to the root. His throat worked and his tongue swirled in an uncoordinated, yet irresistible, tandem that had Aziraphale gasping within seconds. He pushed up into the sensation, his back bowing and his hands tightening in Crowley’s hair as he came down Crowley’s throat.

Crowley swallowed it down and seemed in no rush to leave Aziraphale’s cock, even after taking his mouth away. He continued to nuzzle at him, nose brushing against the soft, sensitive skin in the crease of Aziraphale’s thigh, as all of Aziraphale’s tense muscles abruptly loosened and he fell back against the sofa in a heap.

Finally, after he’d had a moment to collect himself, Aziraphale sat up and reached for Crowley.

“Come here, let me,” he said, but Crowley firmly pushed his hands away.

“Best not,” he said gruffly, levering himself off the ground.

His erection stood out starkly trapped inside his black jeans.

“Why not?” Aziraphale asked.

“Because it was wrong,” Crowley said. “I shouldn’t have...you won’t even remember this in the morning.”

Aziraphale gaped at him. How could he possibly think that? Did Crowley really believe him to be so callous, so blithely unfeeling?

“Of course I will,” he said.

“I have to go,” Crowley said. He stumbled away and headed for the door. “Don’t worry, you won’t even notice.”

“Crowley? Crowley!” Aziraphale shouted after him.

* * *

  
**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 61**

_Make love -_  
_Inside your bed - everybody get down make love_  
_ Get down make love_

Well. That was about enough of that. Aziraphale went back inside the shop and continued his inventory. He’d only been at it a few more minutes when the door opened and a woman walked in.

“Oh. Good afternoon,” Aziraphale said around a grimace. He was already regretting opening early.

The woman smiled politely at him and then made her way into the stacks of his religious texts.

He moved onto cataloguing the romantic texts with a wary eye on the woman, ready to jump in if it looked like she was at risk of choosing a book. Hidden as he was behind a large bookshelf, he quickly conjured up a steaming cup of tea and took a pleasant sip as his eyes skimmed through each tome with a critical eye.

They all looked the same as they had before the fire, down to the rip on the corner of the original rough draft of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Samuel had gifted it to him after a particularly memorable night in Malta, 1804.

Aziraphale carefully took the yellowed pages off the shelf and brought them to a table. It had been close to a century since he’d last reread it, and he preferred the earlier version to what Samuel eventually published.

It really was quite a lovely day, and the sun streaming in the windows provided more than enough light for Aziraphale to parse the awful penmanship.

He made it all the way through the poem and started in on some Descartes. The woman left after half an hour, thankfully without getting ideas about buying things. After a while, though, he began to feel peckish.

Crowley wasn’t too fond of sushi, or Japanese food in general, aside from the saké, but he usually could be persuaded with little difficulty to join Aziraphale. And especially now that they didn’t have to be surreptitious about their friendship, he anticipated with a bit of a thrill in his stomach that the two of them would have plenty more nights out to look forward to.

Going to his phone, he dialed the number he had memorized. The phone rang five times before going to the answerphone.

_Ah, hello, Crowley. It’s me, Aziraphale. I was rather hoping you’d be around so that I could convince you to have lunch with me today, but it seems you had other things to do. Should you receive this soon enough, I’ll be at the sushi restaurant down the road from the shop, if you’d like to join me. Good bye._

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 75**

_Ah, hello, Crowley. It’s me, Aziraphale. I was rather hoping you’d be around so that I could convince you to have lunch with me today, but it seems you had other things to do. Should you receive this soon enough, I’ll be at the sushi restaurant down the road from the shop, if you’d like to join me. Good bye._

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 87**

_Ah, hello, Crowley. It’s me, Aziraphale. I was rather hoping you’d be around so that I could convince you to have lunch with me today, but it seems you had other things to do. Should you receive this soon enough, I’ll be at the sushi restaurant down the road from the shop, if you’d like to join me. Good bye._

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 93**

_Ah, hello, Crowley. It’s me, Aziraphale. I was rather hoping you’d be around so that I could convince you to have lunch with me today, but it seems you had other things to do. Should you receive this soon enough, I’ll be at the sushi restaurant down the road from the shop, if you’d like to join me. Good bye._

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 102**

_Ah, hello, Crowley. It’s me, Aziraphale. I was rather hoping you’d be around so that I could convince you to have lunch with me today, but it seems you had other things to do. Should you receive this soon -- Crowley? Is that you? Are you there --?_

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 103**

_Make love -_  
_Inside your bed - everybody get down make love_  
_ Get down make love_

Well. That was about enough of that. Aziraphale went back inside the shop and continued his inventory. He’d only been at it a few more minutes when the door opened and a woman walked in.

“Oh. Good afternoon,” Aziraphale said around a grimace. He was already regretting opening early.

The woman smiled politely at him and then made her way into the stacks of his religious texts.

Aziraphale had moved onto his collection of romantic texts, keeping a wary eye on the browser who was running a finger along the spine of one of the books, when Crowley walked into the shop with a determined expression on his face.

“You, out,” he said, pointing to the woman before Aziraphale could say a word.

“_What_?” Aziraphale said. “I’m terribly sorry, but we’re closing for lunch. Perhaps you can try back in an hour or two.”

When she left, Aziraphale was about to ask Crowley what on Earth he thought he was doing, but Crowley beat him to the punch.

“The books during the air raid,” he said and Aziraphale felt his heart stop.

“Sorry?” he asked faintly.

“You told me to say that,” Crowley said.

“I absolutely did not,” Aziraphale argued. That was definitely something that he would remember.

“You did,” Crowley insisted. “The Earth is stuck in some sort of a time loop that only I recognize. The same twelve hours keep repeating themselves over and over. I don’t know why. I don’t know how to make it stop. But you told me to say that to you as a quick way to get you to believe me.”

“A _time loop_,” Aziraphale said, mind reeling.

“You’re thinking that it’s like something out of a science fiction novel,” Crowley said, shocking Aziraphale who had, indeed, been thinking that very thing.

“How many times has the day repeated?” Aziraphale asked.

“Well over a hundred,” Crowley admitted. “I’ve lost count.”

“A hundred!” Aziraphale cried. “Why haven’t you told me before now?”

Crowley threw his hands up in exasperation. “I _have_ told you, that’s what I’m saying! I’ve told you plenty of times, you just never remember when the day resets!”

Aziraphale tried to wrap his head around that. “What have I done all that time?”

Crowley shrugged. “Checked over your shop, mostly. Ate a lot of sushi.”

“Sushi sounds wonderful,” Aziraphale interrupted.

“Once, you checked with Heaven and found out that they also don’t know what’s happening,” Crowley continued.

Aziraphale gaped at him, horrified. “You mean I went Upstairs? That’s so dangerous! They tried to kill me!”

Crowley snorted. “Oh, now he figures that out.”

“Anything else?” Aziraphale asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Crowley said, waving his question away. “The point is that yesterday I got a call from a very annoyed Antichrist.”

“Adam phoned you?” Aziraphale asked. “Is he behind this?” Was the whole world stuck inside of an all-powerful child’s game of hide and seek?

“No. He’s trapped, same as me. But he told me that I’m the only one who could fix it -- whatever that means -- and that I needed your help to do it.”

“Why you?” Aziraphale asked.

“If I knew that, do you think I’d be having this conversation for the fiftieth time?”

“Alright, well, no need to get snippy,” Aziraphale said. He nodded at the sofa and they both went to sit. “We’re stuck in a time loop?” Crowley nodded. Try as he might, Aziraphale’s brain halted there. “But that’s not possible.”

Crowley grabbed the lapel of Aziraphale’s coat and shook him. “Move past this part, please.”

“Fine,” Aziraphale said. “Theoretically, we’re stuck in a time loop -- “

“We are _actually_ bloody stuck in a time loop!” Crowley cried. “Books during the air raid! Books during the air raid!”

“Stop saying that!” Aziraphale said, feeling his face heat with embarrassment. “I understand. Alright. We’re stuck in a time loop.”

“Thank you,” Crowley said with a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“And only you and Adam can tell?” Aziraphale continued, going back through the rapidfire information he’d been given. “Heaven doesn’t know. Does Hell?” Crowley shook his head. “There must be something that you have to do today.”

“I don’t know what it could be,” Crowley answered, sounding exhausted.

“Maybe there’s something you _want_ to do that you haven’t?” Aziraphale mused, mostly to himself. “Magic words you have to say?”

“I don’t think I can abracadabra my way out of this,” Crowley said. “I’ve tried everything. This is my punishment. It must be. Beelzebub got me after all.”

Aziraphale looked around at their perfectly pleasant surroundings. “Fairly innocuous day to relive for all eternity,” he commented.

“You don’t know what it’s like to be the only one who can remember,” Crowley said.

The way he looked frayed around the edges, face drawn in tight, body jittery, told Aziraphale all he needed about Crowley’s state of mind.

“Have you slept?” he asked.

“You more than anyone should know that I don’t need to sleep,” Crowley scoffed.

“But you enjoy it,” Aziraphale said. “So take a nap.” He snapped his fingers. “There’s a bed in the back.”

Crowley’s eyes drifted that way, and he looked torn for a moment before Aziraphale made the decision for him.

“Go on,” he said, giving him a nudge. “Take this one off. I’ll keep an eye out for any funny business.”

“Fine,” Crowley huffed. “Don’t do anything stupid.” He shuffled down the hall and then turned around when he reached the doorway. “As punishments go, spending eternity with you isn’t so bad. I just...wish you’d remember. Things.”

Aziraphale watched him carefully. “You could tell me,” he suggested.

Crowley shook his head. “Nah. Good night.”

* * *

**TUESDAY**  
** DAY 104**

_Make love -_  
_Inside your bed - everybody get down make love_  
_ Get down make love_

Well. That was about enough of that. Aziraphale went back inside the shop and continued his inventory. He’d only been at it a few more minutes when the door opened and a woman walked in.

“Oh. Good afternoon,” Aziraphale said around a grimace. He was already regretting opening early.

The woman smiled politely at him and then made her way into the stacks of his religious texts.

Aziraphale had moved onto his collection of romantic texts, keeping a wary eye on the browser who was running a finger along the spine of one of the books, when Crowley walked into the shop with a determined expression on his face.

“Crowley, hello,” Aziraphale said, perking up immediately. Crowley charged up to the center of the room and then stopped, staring at Aziraphale. “Is something wrong?”

Crowley took a deep breath. “I’m in love with you.”

Aziraphale’s jaw dropped and he felt his whole heart stop. A human’s heart would restart after a shock like that, but Aziraphale’s just stayed frozen as he gaped.

“I’m sorry?” he gasped.

Crowley groaned. “I’m in love with you, you stupid, oblivious angel! I’ve been in love with you since time began. How you’ve failed to see it, I’ll never know. I might as well have been waving a sign over my head for six millennia!”

Aziraphale stumbled forward, almost against his will, needing to be closer to Crowley.

“Why…?”

“You told me there might be magic words I have to say -- “ Crowley started.

“When did I -- “

“Or something I wanted to do but hadn’t. Well, this is it! I am _in love with you_.” He raised his arms in the air and turned around in an agitated circle. “Come on, is that it? Is that good enough? Because if it isn’t, I don’t know what else to do.”

Aziraphale glanced around them. “Who are you talking to?” he asked.

Another voice spoke up, achingly familiar. “That’ll have to do.”

Aziraphale and Crowley both spun around to face the woman who had walked into his shop earlier. He knew that voice. Oh, how Aziraphale knew that voice.

She walked up to them and gave Crowley a pat on the shoulder that seemed to make his knees weak. Aziraphale rushed to catch him, wrapping his arm around Crowley’s slender hips.

“Took you a _hundred and four times_,” She said with an enigmatic smile. “I mean, come on. Anyway. Have a nice day, you two. I hear tomorrow is supposed to be even better.” She opened the front door and turned back to look at their gaping faces. “Oh, and Aziraphale? You can keep the clock.” She snapped Her fingers and strolled out.

Immediately, a flood of memories slammed into Aziraphale’s consciousness. He fell to his knees, and Crowley shouted in alarm, thumping down beside him.

“What’s wrong?” Crowley demanded. “What’s She done? Aziraphale, what’s She done?”

“I remember,” Aziraphale gasped, raising his head to stare at Crowley with tears pricking the corners of his eyes. “Oh, my dear. I remember everything.”

Crowley’s face paled and then darkened. “Ah,” he said softly.

Aziraphale could no longer resist. He grabbed Crowley’s face in his hands, the memory of Crowley’s desperation and sadness the night they were together making Aziraphale ache, and sealed their mouths together in a kiss that was six thousand years and one hundred and four days in the making.

**Author's Note:**

> Consider this blanket permission to use this story for any remix, podfic, translation, fanart or other transformative work you'd like, but please inform me, credit me and provide me any links so that I can include it in the notes.
> 
> Join me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/theres-a-goldensky)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Day 7213](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22340110) by [_thelostcity (thelostcity)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelostcity/pseuds/_thelostcity)


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